Nairobi National Museum underwent a long renovation recently, reopening in 2008 after three years. A more modern facade greets visitors and this dinosaur guards the entrance. The dinosaur resembles a T-rex but beyond that it is difficult to discern which dinosaur it is as there is no interpretive sign. Plus it looks like a cartoon character. What does that bode for the inside of the museum?

In the foyer themed halls radiate out. To our left is the East African Birds Hall and we start there. Displays cases fill the room and they are full of stuffed birds. Hundreds and hundreds of stuffed birds, from white pelicans to the tiny tit. Signage is minimal – an inch square piece of aging paper with a typewriter-written name and sometimes a short description – and even a few of those are hidden behind a  bird or two. Sometimes the descriptive paper is there but without the bird. However what does come through loud and clear, no interpretation needed, is the sheer overwhelming number of birds that live in or visit East Africa. Hail this bird paradise. The piddly few I have seen and recorded are nearly embarrassing to contemplate.  I feel like I’ve been birding this whole time with blinders on, missing far more than I see. The Bird Hall is both inspiring and humbling – and I hope it is next on the renovation list. There is so much more to birds than their names and a stuffed specimen.

The mammal hall is slightly less intimidating. The dioramas and displays feature both creatures we have seen and many we have not. The specimens appear to be the same ones as were used prior to the renovation, done in a 50’s style taxidermy. But I suppose that is better than going out and shooting new specimens, right?  This most impressive elephant is a main display and was far too big for a good photo. Ahmed, as he was called, acquired national protection from the government when local people were afraid he’d be poached for his incredible tusks. These aren’t the biggest or heaviest tusks but they are nearly perfectly symmetrical. Ahmed died of natural causes and now is immortalized in the museum. A lucky pachyderm indeed.
Finally, the holy grail of the museum – The Hall of Human Origins. Kenya is home to arguably the most, and the most important, paleo-anthropological finds in history. The Nairobi museum has done a spectacular job of displaying and interpreting these finds. In order of evolutionary appearance we read of Aegyptopithecus, Proconsul and Kenyapithecus and their progeny which became the primates. Moving along (very slowly) there are then the missing years, millions of them. We know almost nothing about an eleven-million year time span between primates and hominid formation. The museum makes no apologies for what it does not know. Nor does it question evolution or ask you to consider creationism. Time and chance are the creators here.

That the fossils were discovered at all boggles the mind and panels explain what was found where by whom. Here are photos taken of the discovery of Turkana Boy, a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, one of the most fantastic finds ever. The ground he was found in looks like most of the land around Turkana – what was it that drew the fossil hunter to that very spot?  I imagine he must have lost his mind when he realized what he was looking at. Only the brow crown was visible in the rock matrix. Beneath the rocks and scattered about were fossilized bones of such importance you might conclude they were laid there on purpose to be found by us, millions of years later. What a rush.

At the end of the Origins Hall is a discrete sign saying Skull Room. It is a small room. Arranged around the walls are jewel-like display cases with carefully staged lighting. Long tapestry panels that describe each glass case. A narrow coffin-size display lays at the center. The atmosphere is hushed. For here, face to face, are the actual fossils of the ancestors of human beings. The real thing. From the rocky desert ground, painstakingly reassembled, are the skulls of Erectus, Rudolphenisis, Habilis, Robutus, and the others. It is breathtaking. I am moved to tears – I cannot believe it. Of course these skulls have been a part of science since their discovery but until now they have not been so beautifully and publicly displayed. Here is Proconsul, where it is thought the primate family tree began. Here is Paranthropus aethiopicus or Black Skull, so-called for the patina it acquired while it laid around waiting to be found. In the center display case is the wonder of Kenya, the amazingly complete Turkana Boy. Turkana Boy was likely between 12 and 18 when he died 1.5 million years ago. How could such delicate bones survive for that impossible amount of time? How did the whole of his lineage survive? Yet here we are, looking at him. We are his cousins, the survivors.

There are no postcards of the Skull Room for sale at the museum; too bad, I’d have bought them all. The Hall of Human Origins is worth a second trip, perhaps after we visit the most famous Ethiopian fossil, Lucy. It is a wonderful world we live in, and have lived in for so long. Hope we can keep it together for a few more million years.